alt Hacker NewsThe problem is that these caveats, while tolerable in some contexts, make the metric impossible to interpret for something like Claude Code which is (I agree!) a huge change in how most software is developed.
If you mostly get around on your feet, distance traveled in a day is a reasonable metric for how much exercise you got. It's true that it also matters how you walk and where you walk, but it would be pretty tedious to tell someone that a "3 mile run" is meaningless and they must track cardiovascular health directly. It's fine, it works OK for most purposes, not every metric has to be perfect.
But once you buy a car, the metric completely decouples, and no longer points towards your original fitness goals even a tiny bit. It's not that cars are useless, or that driving has a magic slowdown factor that just so happens to compensate for your increased distance travelled. The distance just doesn't have anything to do with the exercise except by a contingent link that's been broken.
> But once you buy a car, the metric completely decouples, and no longer points towards your original fitness goals even a tiny bit.
True, but if what you care about is "how quickly and safely can I reach a given goal", distance traveled over time is a great initial indicator, and accident rate will help illuminate.
The question "does AI help me move faster towards a goal, at the same quality standard", is relatively easy to judge in a solo project. As long as you verify equivalent standards, and don't play in an area you don't know at least - folks have a pretty clear understanding of their own productivity if it's a familiar thing.